Natural sugars, such as sucrose, fructose and glucose, are utilized in the food and beverage industries to provide a pleasant taste to foods and beverages. In addition, natural sugars are commonly used in pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, and oral hygienic/cosmetic products to similarly impart a pleasant taste. Sucrose, in particular, imparts a taste that is highly preferred by many consumers. Although sucrose provides superior sweetness characteristics, it is caloric. High-potency (“HP”) sweeteners have been introduced to address consumer demand for products having a pleasant taste, while at the same time meet increasing demand for healthier, reduced calorie products. Moreover, the demand for healthier, reduced calorie products is being driven by public policy and regulatory mandates.
However, HP sweeteners differ significantly from natural caloric sugars in ways that frustrate consumers and limit market penetration of products containing many HP sweeteners. On a taste basis, HP sweeteners exhibit temporal profiles, maximal responses, flavor profiles, mouthfeels, and/or adaptation behaviors that differ from sugar. Commonly, HP sweeteners exhibit delayed sweetness onset, lingering sweet aftertaste, bitter taste, metallic taste, astringent taste, cooling taste and/or licorice-like taste. HP sweeteners may be synthetic chemicals, natural substances, physically or chemically modified natural substances, and/or reaction products obtained from synthetic and/or natural substances. The desire for natural HP sweeteners with favorable taste characteristics remains high.
One class of HP sweeteners are the steviol glycosides. However, utilization has been limited to date by certain undesirable taste properties, including licorice taste, bitterness, astringency, sweet aftertaste, bitter aftertaste, and licorice aftertaste. These undesirable taste properties tend to become more prominent with increased concentration. For example, these undesirable taste attributes are particularly prominent in carbonated beverages, where full replacement of sugar may involve concentrations of steviol glycosides that exceed 500 mg/L.
Importantly, although there exist certain taste modulators that have addressed some or many of the undesirable taste properties of HP sweeteners, the use of taste modulators has added significant cost to the use of HP sweeteners. For example, although a blend consisting of a steviol glycoside, rebaudioside A, with meso-erythritol can ameliorate the undesirable taste properties of rebaudioside A, it also results in a cost increase of about 2- to 4-fold for the good-tasting blends compared to rebaudioside A alone. The cost increase is even more significant when compared to the costs associated with sweeteners such as aspartame- or aspartame/acesulfame-sweetened products.
Despite advances in compositions and methods for sweetening foods, beverages, and other products, there is a scarcity of HP sweeteners that have both the taste properties of sucrose, fructose and glucose and suitably low cost for widespread use. These needs and other needs are satisfied by the present disclosure.